Israeli fence puts 'cage' on villagers / More Palestinians scrambling to keep barrier from going up

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, March 9, 2004

Photo: John Blanchard

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The path of a barrier. Associated Press Graphic

The path of a barrier. Associated Press Graphic

Photo: John Blanchard

Israeli fence puts 'cage' on villagers / More Palestinians scrambling to keep barrier from going up

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2004-03-09 04:00:00 PDT Hableh, West Bank -- Kamal Salman surveyed his land and traced the line of Israel's security barrier -- with its anti-tank ditch, razor-wire fence, electric sensors, military patrol road and 25-foot-high chain-link fence -- around this village.

"We have become like animals in a cage," he said, looking at the 50-yard- wide security zone. "We are surrounded in all directions. Before, you could go wherever you wanted. You could go in and out freely. Now it's gone. There is no freedom now."

Israel began building the fence last year in order to block the entry of Palestinian suicide bombers. A similar security fence around the Gaza Strip has proved nearly 100 percent effective in preventing Palestinians from carrying out terror attacks inside Israel.

Outraged by the dissecting of the West Bank, Palestinians have adopted the mantra "The Wall Must Fall," but many admit that it will be difficult to topple.

Still, Palestinians are using all means possible to prevent the barrier from being expanded. A coordinated political campaign against the "apartheid wall," spearheaded by the Palestinian Communist Party and developed by Palestinian nongovernmental organizations and their mainly European supporters, has been adopted by the government of Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.

Late last month, the campaign reached the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, where jurists were asked to consider a U.N. General Assembly request for an opinion on whether the barrier violates international law.

The route of the barrier has strayed far eastward from the Green Line that separates Israel from the West Bank. In several places, it slices off Palestinian territory and separates farmers from their fields in order to incorporate far-flung Jewish settlements.

On March 1, the Israeli Supreme Court intervened, ordering work to halt for a week on the fence northwest of Jerusalem while it considers a petition from local Palestinians and some of their Israeli neighbors who argue that the route of the fence around the villages of Biddu and Beit Souriq will make life intolerable for the residents.

A petition submitted by Mohammed Dahla, an attorney for the Popular Committee Against the Wall, said the planned route of the barrier would effectively imprison 30,000 Palestinians, cutting them off from Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian commercial capital.

"Residents, after being issued a permit from the army, would all have to leave from one gate, and a trip to Ramallah that now takes five minutes will take up to three hours after the barrier is completed," Dahla said.

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, head of the democracy movement known as the Palestinian National Initiative, initially spearheaded the campaign against the fence.

"This is not a solution -- this will explode," he warned. Barghouti vowed that the wall would come down, just as the Berlin Wall did. But if the barrier were pulled back to the Green Line, he said, his objections would fade considerably.

Even if the International Court of Justice rules against the fence, it would only be a nonbinding, advisory decision. Israel has rejected the court's jurisdiction, saying it concerns "Israel's basic right of self-defense."

Many Palestinians scoff at the idea that security is the main motive for the barrier. Labor Minister Ghassan Khattib has called the project a "land grab" designed to cripple the chance of Palestinian statehood.

"Sharon was never happy about building this separation wall. For him, it was an unnecessary division of land that God promised the Jews," said Khattib. "But Sharon and his allies also recognized that building the wall was simply another way to proceed with his plan to push Palestinians into as little space as possible, making their freedom and independence unattainable and leaving the rest of the land for Israel."

Qureia has said the fence is intended to become a de facto political border. "This leaves no chance for the establishment of a Palestinian state," he said. "They are drawing a picture of an imposed solution on the ground."

That sentiment is echoed in Hableh, a community of farmers and small workshops just on the Palestinian side of the Green Line.

For more than 30 years, Israel tried to wipe the Green Line off the map, establishing settlements on the Palestinian side and encouraging West Bank residents to work in Israel as laborers. Thousands of Palestinians have settled inside Israel, married Israeli Arabs and even applied for citizenship.

But now the Green Line has been replaced by the fence.

The route chosen around Hableh has transformed this once-peaceful village, where there has never been any terrorism, into little more than an open prison. The journey to Qalqilya -- the nearest large town, where many of Hableh's residents shop or attend school -- once took five minutes by car. Now it takes an hour.

Kamal Salman said the security zone had eaten away acres of his land and cut him off from most of what remained. "I've lost between 60 and 70 percent of my income, in addition to about 10 acres of land," he said.

Kamal's brother, Lufti, stood on the roof of his grocery store, shielded his eyes from the burning sunlight and followed the line of the security fence around the village. With a shrug of his shoulders, he pointed to the wall that now separates Hableh from its immediate neighbor, the Israeli settlement of Alfei Menashe.

"Our Jewish neighbors here are good," he said, heading down the stairs to his empty store, put out of business by the three-year intifada. "We never had a problem with them. They used to visit us, and we used to visit them. This was before the intifada."

Many nations, including the United States, have criticized Israel's decision to build the barrier. Israel said last month that it was considering several adjustments that would ease its impact on Palestinian property and lift some restrictions on travel.

Palestinian activists say they are encouraged by the Supreme Court's decision to halt work on the fence near Jerusalem and other instances when objections by local residents have forced the army to change the barrier's route.

Though it will be difficult to stop the relentless progress of the fence, they say they will continue to organize protests and civil disobedience along the route of the hated wall.

"What are the people to do?" asked Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian activist who was arrested for obstructing soldiers in a demonstration in Biddu last week. "Stay quiet as their land is destroyed and their ability to live is stripped away from them?"

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